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Hundreds of women assaulted in German NYE celebrations

coley said:
I am going to have a stab at this,(and I'll probably cock it up) but when he mentions "plunder and booty" I don't think for a minute he was referring to material possessions, rather they took away/undermined our assumptions of safety on our own streets, our belief that we are protected by our laws and the police,and in particular this applies esp to women.
A feeling of safety when out in public has got to be one of the greatest possessions anyone can embrace and treasure, to lose it through terrorism, or plain hooligan/ criminal activity is ultimately much more damaging than losing your wallet or mobile.
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if he meant that i am sure he'd have said that
 
Bernie Gunther said:
The short answer (I have a longer one, but not enough time right now) is that the far right social media campaign pre-dating NYE is just as much a part of the context of this as the victim/eyewitness statements about what happened.

In particular, it has explanatory force in connection with pertinent questions like:

'Why did the corporate political/media complex suddenly start giving a shit (on this scale) about women being sexually assaulted?'

and

'Why is X feature of what happened (e.g. capital / imperialism's role in collapsing states and hence producing an increasing number of zones basically run by militia gangsters and the impact of that on global refugee flows) being largely ignored in favour of a narrative that's primarily concerned with emoting about cultural threats posed by foreigners and yelling at people who refuse to emote along those lines?'

etc.

At no point have I said anything remotely like 'we should ignore the victim/witness accounts of what happened'
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ok. But .. if the NYE attacks on women are best understood as a result of "capital / imperialism's role in collapsing states" then nothing short of a worldwide revolution will help women in Cologne feel safe again when they have to use the central station after dark.
Which may be why people like me are drawn to the 'cultural' type explanations (which a concerted effort at education and getting to know each other could possibly help with) .
Also, looked at in a certain way, what you're doing is just another sort of victim blaming which there's no shortage of already.
 
I'm not trying to misrepresent you bernie, just trying to say why I think that sort of explanation is kind of a depressing dead end, not a helpful way of looking to the future.
 
Casually Red said:
Dude I generally agree with the gist and spirit of what you're saying but not all of the practicalities . For example , unlike people who organise protests, which generally isn't a form of clandestine activity , people intent on mass rape and sexual assault aren't going to stick up posters and the like in advance . They aren't going to co ordinate their activities with police . And they will be totally opportunist in nature , they'll only move whenever they judge they can get away with it . And without a massively increased surveillance and security state and the flooding of town centres with that rotten cctv they will in the main get clean away with it . And they know it. So basically there's no deterrent and no disincentive at present . So they'll continue to do it .

I'm quite sure yourself and many others on the left will be resolutely opposed to police surrounding and acting aggressively towards any group of middle eastern males who turn up in a town centre on a Saturday night or to a festival . But how do you expect them to prevent these rapes occurring unless they actually pre empt them ? Is there to be a mass police presence everywhere ? With water cannon on standby ? Just so people can go out for a drink and party ? Are police to ignore the presence of groups of men of this ethnicity ? Do you realise even their very presence is now going to cause real fear and anxiety, and maybe worse, among people who are just out for the night ?

And again, I'll emphasise this, I think your falling into the trap of fixating on the far right . Right now they aren't the threat. Rapists and a new phenomenon of mass rape culture are the current threat . The people who need to be urgently engaged with are those who feel they are under threat . Because they are under very real threat and this is a major problem . The purpose of the left isn't to focus on the far right, although confronting them is certainly a duty . But not a raison d'être . the purpose of the left, as I've I've always understood it, is to stand 4 square behind the common man and woman in their struggle for a dignified and safe existence. That's simply not happening . The left are failing and will continue to fail until thevpointvof irrelevance . Having increasingly abandoned their core constituency . Irrelevance beckons .

Not having a personal go but I detect in your posts the 3 major mistakes the left are making in their position. Concentration on the far right . Concentration on migrants. And a glib assurance that the state will somehow protect and provide reassurance for women by diligent police work . Which has already proven to be a pipe dream , and is likely to continue as such .
Completely forgotten are the people, the masses , the people . Theyre barely a factor . And I'm absolutely convinced this approach will be the lefts final Waterloo as regards the working class in Europe . the final disconnect .
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Got to rush, just to say I anticipated all your earlier points and agree. I wasnt clear, i was talking about after the event, not before or during. Look at how our state clamped down on 2011 riots. Now, would such a clampdown risk tension? Maybe, but at the risk of being whatever..people with a background in middle east and north african states are probably familiar with far more draconian state ops. Kid gloves and liberalism will risk them thinking they got away with it. I hope not to fixate overly inthe far right. After safeguarding, this is primarily about community relations.
 
Little piece of writing by a Syrian refugee living near Cologne.
Germany has been good to us Syrians. I hope Cologne doesn’t change that | Basheer Alzaalan

He says that whilst the attackers were criminals and should be treated as such he believes that education has a role to play:
"I also think that it is important to look ahead. In Syria, I worked as an English teacher. Now I am a volunteer with Care International in Germany. We support teachers dealing with the many new students who have arrived in this country as refugees. We want to convey core values and counter negative stereotypes, gender roles and discrimination.'

 
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Casually Red said:
I'd disagree . I'd say it's got pretty much everything to do with the influence of Saudi Arabia right across the Muslim world .
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This is what I'd understood - that the Saudis have been distributing money through mosques to people in many arab countries where there's poverty but no help from the local government.

The resulting gratitude makes people open to the package of extremist Islam which comes with it. As it would, and so one of 'our' major allies has been funding extremism using our own money.

How much of a factor is this?
 
irf520 said:
I don't think that's entirely true for the Shia. Each Shia follows the interpretation of the law provided by a mujtahid, so not a personal interpretation but at least one provided by a currently living person which therefore has the potential to evolve.
Click to expand...
There is definitely more potential in the mainstream 12er Shia tradition for novel interpretations on the basis of the gates to ijtihad not being closed. .. nevertheless the fact that in order to be socially accepted as a mujtahid can only be done through via the official sanction of a recognised school (eg qom or basra ) preserves conservative modes of interpretation. So in practice ijtihad becomes limited although logically has more potential....

Sorry if I'm not making sense - I've got a horrible hangover (the ones where u feel sick ) and am writing this on bus on mobile just now....
 
two sheds said:
This is what I'd understood - that the Saudis have been distributing money through mosques to people in many arab countries where there's poverty but no help from the local government.

The resulting gratitude makes people open to the package of extremist Islam which comes with it. As it would, and so one of 'our' major allies has been funding extremism using our own money.

How much of a factor is this?
Click to expand...
Think it's a big factor... to get a snapshot of how widely available these kinda dodgy materials are walk into any Islamic bookshop :(
 
Comment by Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen:

It's the culture, stupid! Or is it?

I've met this guy around the scene over the years, and he knows what he's talking about (the last time I met him, I was drunk, and said something that sounded funny in my head, but which I now deeply regret). He's been denounced by the Norwegian far right already, so he must be doing something correct. Referring to a case of an honour killing in Sweden in 2002, he basically says (as people on this thread have been saying), wagging your finger and saying that's racist isn't a good enough response. The real value of his piece, I think, is that he talks about what 'culture' actually means in these situations, and what that, in turn, means for any response to this crisis.

(I'm not too sure about his use of the "dividual" concept, which derives from Marilyn Strathern's work on Papua New Guinea, but I don't think that detracts from the piece overall).
 
Vivity Report said:
View attachment 82152
Here are the 73 recognised sects of Islam
1. Jarudiah:
2. Sulamania:
3. Butriyah:
4. Yaqubiyya:
5. Hanafiyah:
6. Karibiyah:
7. Kamiliyah:
8. Muhammadiyyah:
9. Baqiriyah:
10. Nadisiyah:
11. Sha'iyah:
12. Ammaliyah:
13. Ismailiyah:
14. Musawiyah:
15. Mubarakiyah:
16. Kathiyah:
17. Hashamiya:
18. Zarariyah:
19. Younasiyah:
20. Shaitaniyah/Shireekiyah:
21. Azraqaih:
22. Najadat:
23. Sufriyah:
24. Ajaridah:
25. Khazimiyah:
26. Shuaibiyah/Hujjatiyah:
27. Khalafiyah:
28. Ma'lumiyah/Majhuliah:
29. Saltiyah:
30. Hamziyah:
31. Tha'libiyah:
32. Ma'badiyah:
33. Akhnasiyah:
34. Shaibaniyah/Mashbiyah:
35. Rashidiyah:
36. Mukarramiyah/tehmiyah:
37. Abadiyah/Afáliyah:
38. Hafsiyah:
39. Harithiya:
40. Ashab Ta'áh:
41. Shabibiyah/Salihiyah:
42. Wasiliyah:
43. Ámriyah:
44. Hudhailiyah/Faniya:
45. Nazzamiyah:
46. Mu'ammariyah:
47. Bashriyah:
48. Hishamiyah:
49. Murdariyah:
50. Ja'friyah:
51. Iskafiyah:
52. Thamamiyah:
53. Jahiziayh:
54. Shahhamiyah/Sifatiyah:
55. Khaiyatiyah/Makhluqiyah:
56. Ka'biyah:
57. Jubbaiyah:
58. Bahshamiyah:
59. Ibriyah:
60. Zanadiqiyah:
61. Qabariyya:
62. Hujjatiya:
63. Fikriyya:
64. 'Aliviyah/Ajariyah:
65. Tanasikhiya:
66. Rajiýah:
67. Ahadiyah:
68. Radeediyah:
69. Satbiriyah:
70. Lafziyah:
71. Ashariyah:
72. Bada'iyah:
73. Ahmadiyya:
Click to expand...

To be honest the whole 73 sect thing is more a rhetorical device rather than the actual state of affairs of the ummah. It's in reference to famous ahadith of the prophet when talking about signs of the end times one of which would be the fracturing of the ummah wherein there are 72 sects that are astray with the 73rd being the correct one... depending on what tradition one gets that hadith communicated from they will be the 73rd one. In the above case looks like it's the ahmadiyyah...

Think the 5 branches that @thomy is referring to are the four sunning schools of jurisprudence and the 12er Shia one
 
xslavearcx said:
To be honest the whole 73 sect thing is more a rhetorical device rather than the actual state of affairs of the ummah. It's in reference to famous ahadith of the prophet when talking about signs of the end times one of which would be the fracturing of the ummah wherein there are 72 sects that are astray with the 73rd being the correct one... depending on what tradition one gets that hadith communicated from they will be the 73rd one. In the above case looks like it's the ahmadiyyah...

Think the 5 branches that @thomy is referring to are the four sunning schools of jurisprudence and the 12er Shia one
Click to expand...

The point that he was trying to make is that Islams fundamentals are never changing and that there is some unchanging uniformity. There is a growing section of Muslims that are becoming quranists these are people who think that the hadiths are largely questionable and only follow the quran. The shia whilst sharing hadiths with sunnis actually reject allot of them because the sources do not state that mohammed gave successorship to Ali in his speech before his last pilgrimage which the shia insist happened. Even the four sunni schools differ on certain issues for example the hanafi have no stated punishment for homosexuality if memory serves. Though thank you for bringing this up.
 
Idris2002 said:
Comment by Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen:

It's the culture, stupid! Or is it?

I've met this guy around the scene over the years, and he knows what he's talking about (the last time I met him, I was drunk, and said something that sounded funny in my head, but which I now deeply regret). He's been denounced by the Norwegian far right already, so he must be doing something correct. Referring to a case of an honour killing in Sweden in 2002, he basically says (as people on this thread have been saying), wagging your finger and saying that's racist isn't a good enough response. The real value of his piece, I think, is that he talks about what 'culture' actually means in these situations, and what that, in turn, means for any response to this crisis.

(I'm not too sure about his use of the "dividual" concept, which derives from Marilyn Strathern's work on Papua New Guinea, but I don't think that detracts from the piece overall).
Click to expand...

That's interesting, but his subjects seem to be largely from a context of families that are relatively well socialised and actively engaged economically.

From what I can see the guys who committed the NYE sex attacks, assaults, robberies etc were excluded lumpen elements, involved with low level organised street crime whether by inclination and/or lack of any better opportunities and plausibly (given how these things normally work) with primary loyalties reflecting that involvement, as well as being in many cases from the kinds of culture that he's talking about.

So it'd be interesting to see how his account could be elaborated to explore that dimension a bit more, without as he puts it 'bracketing' issues of class, exclusion etc.
 
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Vivity Report said:
The point that he was trying to make is that Islams fundamentals are never changing and that there is some unchanging uniformity. There is a growing section of Muslims that are becoming quranists these are people who think that the hadiths are largely questionable and only follow the quran. The shia whilst sharing hadiths with sunnis actually reject allot of them because the sources do not state that mohammed gave successorship to Ali in his speech before his last pilgrimage which the shia insist happened. Even the four sunni schools differ on certain issues for example the hanafi have no stated punishment for homosexuality if memory serves. Though thank you for bringing this up.
Click to expand...
Sorry about making that rather pedantic point.. atm my hangover limits me to making points of fact rather than anything more analytical or substantive.... will come back to this once I've recovered a bit...

Eta if I was still a Muslim I'd probably be a quranist of some form although there would have to still be some more work to do on that to deal with the issues Thomy has raised. ... more on that later!
 
Bernie Gunther said:
That's interesting, but his subjects seem to be largely from a context of families that are relatively well socialised and actively engaged economically.

From what I can see the guys who committed the NYE sex attacks, assaults, robberies etc were excluded lumpen elements, involved with low level organised street crime whether by inclination and/or lack of any better opportunities and plausibly (given how these things normally work) with primary loyalties reflecting that involvement, as well as being in many cases from the kinds of culture that he's talking about.

So it'd be interesting to see how his account could be elaborated to explore that dimension a bit more, without as he puts it 'bracketing' issues of class, exclusion etc.
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Good point - but I'd hold off from classifying them all as "lumpen" until all the investigations are complete. There does seem to be a lot of habitual career criminals in there, but "nice, middle-class boys" are also capable of behaving like that. See here:

Disgraceful Irish Independent report

This report is disgraceful because it deals with a nasty topic in a nasty way, and it may be triggering as well.

(the fact that Irish law still uses the concept of "defilement" for this sort of crime makes me wonder. . .)
 
xslavearcx said:
Eta if I was still a Muslim I'd probably be a quranist of some form although there would have to still be some more work to do on that to deal with the issues Thomy has raised. ... more on that later!
Click to expand...

I agree with some of the stuff he has said but don't like the rhetoric that he uses. I also don't think there is an Islamic proclamation that you should go out drunk in a large group to sexually assault and rob people. At least two or all of those are punished harshly. What was it errm lets see, hand chopping for theft and lashes for getting lashed if memory serves. You could say that Islam does encourage an attitude towards women which may leave some to not value the agency of women but that is something all Abrahamic religions have in common though.
 
Idris2002 said:
Good point - but I'd hold off from classifying them all as "lumpen" until all the investigations are complete. There does seem to be a lot of habitual career criminals in there, but "nice, middle-class boys" are also capable of behaving like that. See here:

Disgraceful Irish Independent report

This report is disgraceful because it deals with a nasty topic in a nasty way, and it may be triggering as well.

(the fact that Irish law still uses the concept of "defilement" for this sort of crime makes me wonder. . .)
Click to expand...

Sure. I've no doubt that's possible, but I still think the evidence I've seen suggests what you might call the organisational core of this activity being pre-existing street crime gangs.

There's a fair bit of criminology conference stuff from the last couple of years on the growing problem of such gangs in the major european cities that makes informative reading in this context.

For example, the linkage between people trafficking gangs and street crime gangs.

See e.g. http://www.antislavery.org/includes...criminal_activities_and_begging_in_europe.pdf
 
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Bernie Gunther said:
Sure. I've no doubt that's possible, but I still think the evidence I've seen suggests what you might call the organisational core of this activity being pre-existing street crime gangs.

There's a fair bit of criminology conference stuff from the last couple of years on the growing problem of such gangs in the major european cities that makes informative reading in this context.
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What will be interesting will to be find out how many of the perpetrators are from last year's refugee wave, and how many (like the American and the Serb who have already been lifted, if memory serves - does memory serve?) are from the pre-existing criminal element. And what will be really interesting will be finding how the latter recruited the former.
 
Idris2002 said:
What will be interesting will to be find out how many of the perpetrators are from last year's refugee wave, and how many (like the American and the Serb who have already been lifted, if memory serves - does memory serve?) are from the pre-existing criminal element. And what will be really interesting will be finding how the latter recruited the former.
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There's a particular conference paper I recall reading a while back that says in effect, that the initial explosion in this sort of criminality was mostly linked with balkan refugees, but that those guys now tend more to be middle management (fencing stolen goods, wholesale drugs, people trafficking etc) and that refugees from the middle east and north Africa, along with a certain number of local druggies, tend to be the ones actually committing the street crime these days.

The linkage of those refugee flows with capital's wars and the consequent collapse of states and rise of gangsterism is worth noting also, but that's a slightly different discussion.
 
Bernie Gunther said:
That's interesting, but his subjects seem to be largely from a context of families that are relatively well socialised and actively engaged economically.

From what I can see the guys who committed the NYE sex attacks, assaults, robberies etc were excluded lumpen elements, involved with low level organised street crime whether by inclination and/or lack of any better opportunities and plausibly (given how these things normally work) with primary loyalties reflecting that involvement, as well as being in many cases from the kinds of culture that he's talking about.

So it'd be interesting to see how his account could be elaborated to explore that dimension a bit more, without as he puts it 'bracketing' issues of class, exclusion etc.
Click to expand...
Another point is that Eriksen implies that a Europe that can provided meaningful work for new immigrant groups will be able to integrate them into society - but Euro elites are both unwilling and unable to create that sort of work. They're quite happy with bringing the austerity hammer down on everyone below them.
 
Idris2002 said:
Comment by Norwegian anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen:

It's the culture, stupid! Or is it?

I've met this guy around the scene over the years, and he knows what he's talking about (the last time I met him, I was drunk, and said something that sounded funny in my head, but which I now deeply regret). He's been denounced by the Norwegian far right already, so he must be doing something correct. Referring to a case of an honour killing in Sweden in 2002, he basically says (as people on this thread have been saying), wagging your finger and saying that's racist isn't a good enough response. The real value of his piece, I think, is that he talks about what 'culture' actually means in these situations, and what that, in turn, means for any response to this crisis.

(I'm not too sure about his use of the "dividual" concept, which derives from Marilyn Strathern's work on Papua New Guinea, but I don't think that detracts from the piece overall).
Click to expand...

It's not often that what the world needs is .. an anthropologist :facepalm: but I think that piece of writing does a great job.

Particularly:
"If you have a background in a society where kinship is important and men dominate in the public sphere, where voluntary, chosen love relationships are tabooed and undesired, and where honour and shame define essential qualities in a person, you may well get confused by the sight of large numbers of happy, partying, unchaperoned women in the public sphere."

I think that he's right too in his 'prescription'- courses might help a little bit but the way to really deal with this is real integration, having female German friends for instance.
Thanks for posting it Idris2002 .



 
Idris2002 said:
Another point is that Eriksen implies that a Europe that can provided meaningful work for new immigrant groups will be able to integrate them into society - but Euro elites are both unwilling and unable to create that sort of work. They're quite happy with bringing the austerity hammer down on everyone below them.
Click to expand...

Well, I'm not really sure that governments, whichever (plausibly electable) political parties are in charge, would be allowed to do anything useful about that.

There's no realistic prospect of what would be needed, of a sort of Marshall Plan for dealing with the human consequences of the last couple of decades of imperialist adventures.

As far as I can tell capital is perfectly OK with collapsed states that produce marketable loot and doesn't really give a shit about the consequences for society.

That's what it employs the media and those plausibly electable parties to look after ... damage control.

ETA - it probably goes without saying, but I think it's also the role of far-right movements to perform damage control for capital along dimensions that are less available to the official media and parties.
 
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Idris2002 said:
And that's going to happen after all this? Maybe for the next generation.
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True. I read the other day that a lot of the recent arrivals, particularly the young men (in Berlin this was about) are being housed in things like converted mental hospitals, on the outskirts of town, in a sort of barracks environment. The idea that they're going to be invited out someday soon for a night out with their new female friends from the office is.. ridiculous.
 
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